Photo By Brannen Parrish | Zachary Miller, powerplant electrician, R S Kerr Powerhouse, Tulsa District, U.S. Army...... read more read more
The generators at Robert S. Kerr Powerhouse in Sallisaw, Oklahoma are probably the busiest in terms of electrical generation of any in the Tulsa District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Since the first unit was placed into service in 1971, the four hydropower generators have provided thousands upon thousands of hours of electricity for people in rural parts of the country.
“We’re probably the busiest in the Tulsa District, just because we get more water than any of the other hydropower dams in the district,” said Steven Mills, the powerplant specialist, who oversees a team of mechanical and electrical maintenance specialists that ensure the dam and powerhouse continue to operate. “All of the water from the other powerplants that feed into the Arkansas River system comes through here.
Any time work is going on the electricians and mechanical maintenance people will be working together to get the job done.
“A lot of these jobs, we have smaller crews so it takes everybody together. There’s a lot of times where we have to come together,” said Zachary Miller, an electrician at R S Kerr. “When they are building scaffolding down in the turbine, we are all down there throwing boards in.”
According to Mills, the maintenance crew at Robert S. Kerr don’t have the benefit of only performing work in one field.
“My people here have to go from one extreme, electrically, to the other extreme mechanically,” said Mills. “We go from confined space to very high heights. We go from flood gates to working on generators. So we have to be very diverse.”
Being the busiest generators in the Tulsa District is a point of pride with the maintenance team at the R S Kerr but the maintenance schedule is also busy.
“In a perfect world normal day-to-day stuff would be preventive maintenance but a lot of our work is break down maintenance; so our job is to keep these four units running and producing power,” said Zachary Henshall, a powerplant mechanical journeyman at R S. Kerr.
“Up until recently, these units have run with very little issues, major issues for a long time and they got a lot of production out of them,” said Ronald Henry, the senior electrician at R S Kerr.
The maintenance team at the R S Kerr Powerhouse are a tight-knight group that works hard to keep electricity flowing and manage many other mechanical and electrical maintenance needs at the plant. Whether it’s clearing a logjam from a flood gate, replacing electrical wiring at the switch yard or getting a generator or turbine back into working order, the maintenance crew at R S Kerr work long hours to ensure the Tulsa District’s various missions are met as needed.
“I’ve probably got the best crew there is. They are very diversified. They can be working on a generator one day, and the next day they can be repairing a turbine or whatever they need to do,” said Mills. “They get along extremely well and I couldn’t be more proud of a group than the group I have right now.”
| Date Taken: | 03.24.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 03.24.2019 18:58 |
| Story ID: | 315492 |
| Location: | SALLISAW, OKLAHOMA, US |
| Web Views: | 274 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Generating Accomplishment: Powerhouse Maintenance at Robert S. Kerr, by Brannen Parrish, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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